We have domesticated our humanity as much as we have domesticated our horses. Our human nature is a malleable crop that we planted 50,000 years ago, and continue to garden even today. The field of our nature has never been static. We know that genetically our bodies are changing faster now than at any time in the past million years. Our minds are being rewired by our culture. With no exaggeration, and no metaphor, we are not the same people who first started to plow 10,000 years ago. The snug interlocking system of horse and buggy, wood fire cooking, compost gardening, and minimal industry may be perfectly fit for a human nature — of an ancient agrarian epoch. I call this devotion to a traditional being “selfish” because it ignores the way in which our nature — our wants, desires, fears, primeval instincts, and loftiest aspirations — are being recast by ourselves, by our inventions, and it excludes the needs of our new natures. There are many traditionalists who deny this shift, and who hold our nature is unchanging; from the perspective of an individual, or even a generation, it looks that way. But for anyone raised by a modern culture crammed with ubiquitous writing, communication technology, science, pervasive entertainment, travel, surplus food, abundant nutrition, and new possibilities every day, we are different beings than our ancestors. We think different. That should be no surprise because our personas are dictated beyond our genetics. More than our hunter-gatherer ancestors we are shaped by the accumulating wisdom, practices, traditions, and culture of our all those who’ve lived before us and live with us. At the same time our genes are racing. And we are speeding the acceleration of those genes by several means, from medical interventions to gene therapy, and then racing our culture with computers and wires as well. In fact every trend of the technium — especially its increasing evolvability — point to more rapid change of human nature in the future.

















